


Breath Easy

by Antimonicacid



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 18:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15442779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antimonicacid/pseuds/Antimonicacid
Summary: Breathing though. Breathing was something he could do. Breathing was an act that required very little of him. Just the filling of his lungs and the sense to allow his body to do so uninterrupted.Breathing was a map to normalcy.Breathing was a bridge to humanity.





	Breath Easy

i.

Late at night when the moon wasn’t shining, but the stars still twinkled bright enough to reflect off the domes of sand- Gaara once heard snippets of a radio broadcast creep its way from under the door of his father’s room. A man’s voice grogged down with sleep from the in between hours of late and dawn formed careful words to fill the gap of the next song’s wait. 

“We’re all humans. We live. We breath. We love. We die,” he stated it so easy. Stated it so soundly. Stated it like the truth of the universe delivered like water from the sky or rocks from the ground below. 

When Gaara walked past the room once again, trip to the bathroom secure and otherwise uneventful, the radio was no longer playing, but his father’s light still flickered shadows across the floor. He tiptoed past, his feet making not a sound, and instead heard the hallway fill with the faint noise of his father’s breath echo in the air.

We’re all humans. We live. We breath. We love. We die. 

It was a list full of half truths and maybe lies. 

Human didn’t fully capture the details of his birth or what laid dormant in the very crevices of his body. Living was debatable depending on how well one accepted his methodology of doing so. Love was laughable. Dying was an act he had been swiftly dodging for the last few years. 

Breathing though. Breathing was something he could do. Breathing was an act that required very little of him. Just the filling of his lungs and the sense to allow his body to do so uninterrupted. 

Breathing was a map to normalcy. 

Breathing was a bridge to humanity. 

ii.

His father lived. His father breathed. His father loved. His father died. 

Gaara didn’t mourn him any step of the way. 

“Doesn’t it make you angry?” Naruto had once asked. Long long long after His Father’s body rested in the ground. After it had deteriorated and rotted inside the earth until nothing but bone fragments remained emptied and hollowed. 

Naruto doesn’t specify what the source of the anger could be, but Gaara knows. He knows of the way the village’s abuse reverberates within Naruto’s question. He knows of that rejection. He knows to dig deeper past that and to stare harder and to search to the tiny kernel of pain and find the meaning behind the question. 

“Does your father make you angry?” Gaara asks in return. 

Naruto shrugs. “Yeah. All the time.” 

“Mine doesn’t.” Their experiences mirror each other in many ways, but not all. It’s not unexpected. 

The two sit together for minutes more and Naruto stares at Gaara’s hands and thinks him a liar. 

They breath and they are quiet and they are alive in the unwillingly unspoken. 

iii. 

At the joint of Gaara’s wrist where his blood pulses hot and the blue of his veins reflect green against his brown skin Naruto presses his lips and holds still. He murmurs against the skin and refuses the let go. 

“Is it different without him?” Naruto phrases his question without specification, but once again none is needed. Naruto’s the only one Gaara knows who can impart the same mixture of love and sickness and admiration and hatred to truly reflect that of a jinchuriki. 

“It’s not that different,” Gaara says and watches Naruto close his eyes to feel the pulse of an inconvenience pass against his lips. 

“I don’t know how I’d feel without the kyuubi inside me.” He responds. 

“Empty,” he breathes out. “Mainly empty.” 

Gaara knuckles are pressed against Naruto’s cheek and he sighs. “Can you sleep now?” 

Shukaku had pressed against his insides and threatened to burst out if Gaara didn’t hold himself together at all times. He had screamed and ripped and threatened and snarled. He was a constant presence that promised devastation whenever Gaara had so much as shut his eyes for a minute. 

Gaara missed him fiercely. Gaara missed him to the point it ached and his body throbbed and his skin crawled from the loneliness. 

“I-” He begins, but Naruto stops him before he can answer. 

“I know. I know.” 

In his state of most human Gaara loves. Still it hurts. 

iv.

One time when it was late enough in the night that not even the bugs stirred and the grass had formed dew Naruto had struggled to stay awake at Gaara’s side. Worried that he would grow lonely in his insomnia. 

“Where does it all go?” Naruto asks while leaning against Gaara’s boney shoulder. 

“What do you mean?” Gaara forces him to elaborate. 

“Your emotions. Your feelings. All of it. Where does it go if you won’t tell me?” And it isn’t an accusation. It’s concern. 

“I’m sorry,” it’s not an answer. He thinks about it and he pictures himself. He sees a human shape held together with skin and bandages. He sees sand slip out between the cracks. He doesn’t see his emotions. “I’m sorry.” It’s not an answer. 

Naruto yawns big and loud. “You should let it out. Let it be messy. Let it go everywhere.” 

Gaara stares down at his hands and doesn’t respond. Just feels the way Naruto words sink into the crevices of his body. Feels the way they envelop him. 

“I’m,” Gaara says while closing his eyes. “Angry all the time.”

“I know.” Naruto pushes closer into his side. 

“I don’t think there’s much more than that sometimes.” He pushes his answer past his teeth. He feels Naruto nod his head. “I don’t want it to eat me up.”

“I wouldn’t let it.” 

Inside his chest Gaara let’s his lungs do the work of expanding and shrinking. Let’s his body keep him alive and functioning. His voice cracks and he says “I didn’t want this to happen to me.” 

v. 

When he was a child Gaara once walked past his father’s room in the dead of night. The journey to the bathroom in his household was frightful. One that necessitated the passing of the master bedroom. A trip he dreaded and avoided if at all possible. He moved past quick. Remembering to be silent like a ninja, but not fast enough to draw the attention of a killer’s sixth sense of danger. 

When he passed his father’s room that night the radio had been on. A man’s voice cracked slow as it maneuvered its way around the the lyrics of a song. 

His father had sang along to music. Like a human. Like a man who had felt love once. 

Even knowing this Gaara couldn’t find it within himself to mourn his passing. 

Years later Naruto holds his hand tight. Out of anger and hostility towards a man he never met. Holds his hand tight to the point it aches. Holds his hand tight and lets his animosity and hurt and empathy and pain be shared with Gaara. 

“I hate what they did to you.” Naruto tells him. “They shouldn’t had.” He says it with such strong conviction it makes Gaara’s breath stop. “They shouldn’t had.”

**Author's Note:**

> fic prompt off tumblr http://blackshikamaru.tumblr.com/


End file.
